New programmer

[Rob]

Infinity have a new programmer on the market , awesome piece of hardware .

[OSIRUS]

Some Questions to consider,

Is it just a reader ?

or can it program cards as well ?

if it can program cards, does it have a list of cards that it can successfully program ?

I guess it also depends, what you want it for too

[gw1]

It . In that respect it's inferior to the older Infinity USB Phoenix. That's why it's relatively cheap.

Hardware-wise it's quite capable of doing so: it does this when you use their utility (which lets you keep usernames and passwords in encrypted form on a gold, silver, emerald, fun or prussian). But the manufacturer doesn't want to give you, the customer, direct access to that capability - they want you to buy their Infinity USB Uncrippled, ie Unlimited.

So what exactly does it offer? I don't own one but after reading the manual and website here's what I found.

It's a standard Windows PC/SC compliant card reader, which means that it's compatible with Microsoft's standard driver for smartcard interfaces. That means any Windows application written to PC/SC API, any HBCI-compliant application, any application, any Java application using or framework, will be able to use it to access smartcards without requiring a special driver.

The functionality available in this way is standardised under two USB specifications: (CCID) [3.1MB PDF] and (ICCD) [580K PDF]. These were jointly developed by a bunch of companies including NDS, SCM, , Philips, STMicroelectronics, GemPlus, Cherry and others. That agreement between USB smartcard interface manufacturers on programming convention provides independence between software makers and device manufacturers, allowing applications to talk to smartcards in the same way regardless of operating system or interface brand. Specifically it provides a uniform way to control card voltage and clock frequency, reset sequencing, baud rate, card reader LCD display, card eject mechanism etc where supported by the reader hardware. The protocol supports for ISO7816 T=1 as well as character level communication for T=0. It encompasses PIN management / prompting / verification, information fields, event notification and error handling. Last time I looked Microsoft's CCID driver didn't support PIN entry or multi-slot card readers though.

Phoenix and Smartmouse protocols however were developed for RS232, not USB. USB card readers that only implement the CCID and ICCD protocols won't work with software written for Phoenix or Smartmouse interfaces. Many people have found that out the hard way over the years! Fortunately Infinity USB Smart comes with a utility that creates a virtual COM port driver for you with configurable COM port number, reset polarity and card clock frequency. You can configure that utility to automatically run on Windows startup, and then forget about it: your other software can then talk to the virtual COM port as though it were a physical serial port with Phoenix or Smartmouse device attached. You can configure the virtual COM port via GUI or command line.

There's also a tool which can be used in future to upload into USB Smart custom firmware modules. That's not for firmware upgrades (there's a standard USB protocol for that) but for alternative functionality which you can utilise selectively when you need to. There's a "module" switch underneath the unit which determines whether the alternative mode runs or whether it operates as a standard smartcard/phoenix device. When you flip the switch it enumerates as a different USB device. In theory it might be possible to write your own code for it to program blank cards or whatever but why would you bother? At this stage from what I can see they're using the module system as a delivery channel for workarounds to address timing compatibility issues, with .

The user manual is on the website. It's frustratingly thin in technical detail.

The indicates that the Infinity USB Smart supports both 5V and 3V cards, which is nice if true. However that appears to contradict the . I don't know which to believe.

As I said earlier it supports their PasswordSafe utility which lets you store all your usernames and passwords in blowfish encrypted form on a PIC or AVR smartcard (gold, silver, green, fun, prussian etc). It's Windows-only at this stage, not especially secure (a trojan infected PC could sniff out your keys no problem), and requires you to install their utility wherever you use your password smartcard. But apart from those limitations it's not a bad effort.

Can you use it to program whiteys? No reason why not - you only need Phoenix mode for that. But it doesn't come with any special tools for that purpose, unlike Duolabs' CAS 3 which has all-singing all-dancing software.

[lo0]